The average handover time (37:16) was more than two minutes faster than January 2025 (39:27) and almost five minutes (4:42) faster than the same week last year.

This came despite the highest number of handovers (420,324) for the month since 2020 and a 5.2% increase compared to 399,415 in January last year.

Health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting said: ‘By planning for winter earlier than ever before, we're now seeing real improvements in urgent and emergency care. Ambulance response times and handovers are faster, the longest A&E delays are falling compared to last year, and flu is taking up fewer hospital beds. 

‘We backed this with £450m for urgent and emergency care, 500 new ambulances on the road, and millions of flu, Covid and RSV vaccinations to keep people well and out of hospital.

‘Winter pressures haven't disappeared, but we're learning from this season to strengthen our response further and break the cycle of struggle the NHS faces each winter.'

Critical incident

Winter viruses continue to add to demand in hospitals with more than one thousand (1,093) adult beds on average closed or occupied each day last week due to norovirus. There were also still more than 900 patients (904) on average in hospital each day last week with the bug.

There were also almost 4,000 more calls (3,878) received by NHS 111 services (381,479) compared to the same week last year (377,601).

A critical incident was declared this week at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust due to ongoing and exceptional demand for hospital services at the William Harvey Hospital, Ashford.

Royal Lancaster Infirmary, meanwhile, escalated to Operations Pressure Escalation Levels (OPEL) 4 to cope with significant and growing demand.

Flu rates continued to drop since last month's peak but there was still an average of almost 1,500 (1,491) patients in hospital with flu and an average of 630 patients in hospital with Covid-19 per day last week.